Beautiful photo of Saturn's rings hides two moons

Two moons of Saturn are hiding among the giant planet's distinctive rings in a newly released photo from a NASA spacecraft.

The small moons Prometheus and Pandora are just barely visible as bright spots against Saturn's ring plane. Pandora is located toward the right of the image, while Prometheus is in the center of the photo along the ring plane.

The moons' "proximity to the rings also means that they often lie on the same line of sight as the rings, sometimes making them difficult to spot," NASA said in a statement.

Prometheus and Pandora are actually partially responsible for the shape of Saturn's F-ring, a narrow band of debris around Saturn.

The photo, taken on May 6, was captured by the Cassini spacecraft — a probe that has been exploring Saturn and its 62 moons since it arrived at the planetary system in 2004.

Cassini took the image when it was about 994,000 miles from Prometheus, a moon that is about 53 miles in diameter. Pandora is slightly smaller at 50 miles across, according to NASA.

Cassini is actually going to get an up-close and personal view of Saturn's rings as the spacecraft flies between the planet and the ring plane sometime in the last two years of the spacecraft's mission at the ringed world.

Cassini's mission should end in 2017, when it runs out of fuel, making a planned crash into the planet's atmosphere, burning up on descent.

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